


this chaos, this calamity (this garden once was perfect)

by AgentJoanneMills



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, DCU, Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: ALSO full of metaphors, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Injustice, Angst, Dark!Supergirl, F/F, Injustice!AU - Freeform, Metaphors Are Important, Multiverse, Overlord!Supergirl, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, aka murder and mayhem, this is not for those who expect a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 06:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10211618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentJoanneMills/pseuds/AgentJoanneMills
Summary: This is the story about the death of the Sun and how it led to the apocalypse.(Alternatively: One death is one death too many, and Kara Zor-El will give no more.Injustice: Gods Among Us AU“I can say without a doubt that there are an infinite number of universes. Some are just like our own, but for one or two significant events, exactly the same.”—Lex Luthor,Injustice: Gods Among Us)





	

**Author's Note:**

> *Recognizable elements belong to their respective owners.  
> **Merely a work of fanfiction. No copyright infringement intended.  
> ***Title from “[Wine Red](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r6MFfMEziE)” by The Hush Sound.  
> **** _Injustice: Gods Among Us_ synopsis [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injustice:_Gods_Among_Us#Synopsis).

 

This is the story about the death of the Sun and how it led to the apocalypse.

 

See, it starts like this:

Light-years away, a highly advanced civilization dooms itself into inevitable destruction, and it met its end before a giant red star.

An entire world, and entire race, gone in a flash. Just like that.

 

That was the beginning.

 

****

 

They say an explosion gave birth to the universe and all it contains.

 

They tend to forget that in every second, in every minute, in every hour, the universe gives back tenfold.

 

And it explodes, and explodes, and explodes.

 

And it takes, and takes, and takes.

 

****

 

But there’s hope. There always is, isn’t there?

 

****

 

**I.**

Hope is a girl, too young, _too young_ , to carry the memory of a billion lives. Hope is skin too soft to be scarred by a billion deaths. Hope is eyes too innocent to witness the destruction of _everything_ , too pure to have seen the explosion of a whole world. Hope is shoulders too small to bear the burden of a lost culture, a lost home. Hope is hair touched with gold, strands of courage and determination and optimism woven to create a halo of light.

 

****

 

(In the myths, they say Hope was the only thing left in Pandora’s jar of evil things—a foil to all the suffering, all the wickedness that had been set free.

 

No one really questioned why the gods thought Hope belonged in the jar in the first place.)

 

****

 

**II.**

Hope gets trapped in a dark place for a long time. It seems endless, the darkness, and feels lonely and cold.

 

But Hope persists, and in the end, Hope prevails.

 

****

 

**III.**

Hope, on Earth, is a god trying to be human.

Hope is strong, and powerful, and vibrant. Hope is absolute in her influence, and unstoppable in the loyalty she inspires to everyone who touches her, who so much as sees her, even. Hope is the monolith of morality, the pillar of virtue.

 

Hope is happy, for a time.

She’s happy because she exists, and her survival is the last gift her parents had given her, and she wants to honour that.

She’s happy because she has a new family now, and friends who love her, who support her, and who keep her grounded in a world where she gets elevated to a pedestal that sometimes feels too much, _too much, too much_.

She’s happy because she gets to help people, gets to have a purpose. And isn’t that why she survived, anyway? To defend humanity, even from threats of its own making? To be its saviour?

And so Hope soars across the skies, a blue-and-red blur of justice, a bastion made of goodness and integrity. She basks in the warmth of a people grateful for her help and moved by her genuineness, and she knows she’s doing good work, here in a planet where she’s strong and invulnerable and where the darkness and the cold only come at night.

 

And it is enough . . .

. . . until it isn’t.

 

****

 

There’s something missing. She knows it. There’s a void within her, as empty as the Phantom Zone, as empty as a black hole, as empty as the ruins of a planet long gone.

 

And she tries to fill that void, she does. She tries, and tries, and tries, but nothing succeeds, nothing sates, nothing satisfies.

(Nothing, and the nothingness aches.)

 

Nothing . . . until she meets  _her_.

 

****

 

**IV.**

Hope, on Earth, is a god named Kara. She tries _so_ hard to be human, but she will never succeed—especially not when she falls in love with the Sun.

 

Their story starts like this:

An aircraft explodes, because the universe says so.

Kara saves the aircraft, together with her cousin, because the universe says so.

They discover that the aircraft has been compromised, and they investigate, and in the process . . .

 

. . . in the process, the nothingness stops.

 

Because the universe says so.

 

****

 

Kara, of the great and noble House of El, meets Lena Luthor, and her world will never be the same again.

 

****

 

Lena is Kara’s Sun, the yellow star of the Earth, giving her strength, making her invincible. Her eyes infuse the universe with sunshine, her voice welcomes the dawn. Her touch ignites a long-dead dream, warms an ever-present cold, fills the persistent void. She brings colour to Kara’s life, and everything burns brighter, burns hotter.

 

Lena embodies everything Kara fights for.

Lena _is_ everything Kara fights for.

 

And she knows Lena is not perfect, knows the sharpness of her smiles and the edges of her voice and the danger in her eyes. Lena is a dagger, unsheathed, a weapon shaped in elegance. She is a woman formed from the shattered glass of a child’s innermost dreams and an orphan’s unheard wishes and a daughter’s withered expectations. Lena is cutting and scathing and harsh when she needs to be, but the thing is—the thing is she chooses not to, she chooses to be good, she chooses to be as constant as the sun in Kara’s sky.

And Kara loves her in the spaces of forever, in the windows of eternity.

 

****

 

**V.**

Kara Zor-El marries Lutessa Lena Luthor on a spring day, in a garden with flowers in full bloom, dancing in the cool breeze.

The sunshine gently cascading from the heavens illuminates Lena, like the cosmos itself is giving her its blessing, is giving her the benediction she has fought for and has always so richly deserved.

“Stronger together,” Kara says, entwining their fingers, two rings glinting in the light.

“Stronger together,” Lena agrees, smiling, and Kara knows she will do everything she can to keep her wife— _her wife!_ — smiling at her like that for the rest of her life.

 

A year into their marriage, Lena discovers an old project by her brother, abandoned and forgotten in some laboratory in the middle of nowhere. She tells Alex Danvers about it, because they are friends now, and because Lena is a trusted consultant of the DEO. They go to the facility, along with Kara, and retrieve files upon files of research and intensive study of Kryptonian biology.

Their greatest find, however, will be the best thing Lex Luthor could have ever gifted his sister, unintentional as it may be.

There is a machine, in the middle of Lex’s lab, constructed with the sole purpose of creating the perfect breed of Kryptonian and human. It is the same machine that created Kon-El, and it is the same machine that will then help Lena and Kara sire their own child.

Alex Danvers reads through the research associated with the machine, making sure that there will be no repercussions, no risk, for either Kara or Lena, and especially for their future child. She tirelessly verifies the scientific data, enlists Winn’s help to translate every line of code. She pours in the effort, because Kara and Lena deserve this; Lena deserves the chance to have a family untainted with the sins of the past, and Kara deserves the chance to continue her great and noble line, to get to take care of a Kryptonian child in a way that only a true Kryptonian could.

And Alex doesn’t share this, not even to Maggie, but the fact is she pours in the effort most of all because she wants to be an aunt.

 

Alex is a genius. She finds a way for Lena to carry the child to term in her own body—something for which Lena says she will be forever grateful, and they don’t talk about how she cried all over Alex’s lab coat and sobbed about how she never thought she’d ever, _ever_ get this chance. They also don’t talk about how there’s always a table for Alex in every L-Corp-associated restaurant and about the anonymous donation to Maggie Sawyer’s task force in the NCPD.

What they _do_ talk about is how Supergirl gets caught on camera doing somersaults while flying and how she’s unable to stop grinning even when being shot at and how—and Alex is halfway between being amused and frustrated here—she becomes the star of a viral video because she inadvertently leads a _High School Musical_ –themed flash mob in a school she’s saved from a fire.

(Winn reset the music of every DEO elevator to “We’re All in This Together,” and not even J’onn can muster enough annoyance to make him change it, because, well, not that J’onn will admit this himself, but the video’s awesome in a ridiculous kind of way.)

 

Laurel Luthor Danvers is born on a summer day, with hair as dark as Lena’s and eyes as blue as Kara’s.

At first, Kara wants to name her Lora Luthor. “I kinda really wanna keep the alliteration thing going.”

Lena, however, will not let that be. “Laurel,” she says, and Kara freezes, her eyes wide. “We’ll call her Laurel. I guess Lora can be her nickname.”

“I—”

“I know this is not Krypton, and I can’t do anything about that. I would have loved to call her Lora El, you know, since she _is_ of the House of El. But I figure we can’t do that without some eyebrows raising.” Lena smiles at Kara then, that smile she married her for, that smile that makes life worth living. “So this is a compromise. Laurel Luthor Danvers, child of both Krypton and Earth.”

The happiness that bubbles in Kara’s heart right there and then is unlike anything she’d ever felt, and she is helpless to pull her wife closer, claiming her lips in a delighted kiss.

After, she pulls back, but only just so, resting their foreheads together. “I can’t believe you’re giving our daughter _three_ surnames,” she says, teasing.

Lena scoffs, though her fingers are still tangled in golden locks. “You should be glad I didn’t include Alexis in there. I really wanted to see what your sister’s face would have been.”

Kara grins. “Maybe next time?”

“God, Kara, let’s see how this one goes first.”

“So that’s a yes, right?”

A beat, and Lena yanks her back into another kiss. “Yes, darling,” she answers in adoring exasperation, “that’s a yes.”

 

****

 

In that universe, that will be that. Kara and Lena will enjoy their strong, blissful union for a long, _long_ time.

But that is not _this_ universe.

 _This_ particular universe is a sick, twisted master.

 

Kara has already suffered incomprehensible loss.

 

She will suffer one more.

(Two, really, but for the price of one, a price too high but will nonetheless be paid.)

 

Because _this_ universe says so.

 

****

 

**VI.**

The end happens like this:

Lillian Luthor learns of Lena’s pregnancy, and anger and revulsion simmer in her blood, and disgust coils bitterly in the pit of her stomach.

She cannot have her husband’s _indiscretion_ live a happy life, not while her own son is rotting in prison, not while the world is still full of abominations. It is not right, _not right_.

She uses the last of Cadmus’s resources to rip everything apart.

 

****

 

The apocalypse comes in three parts:

 

 _One_ :

Cadmus destroys National City, and millions of lives are wiped out in a nuclear blast.

 

 _Two_ :

Cadmus exposes Supergirl to a chemical that messes with her perception of reality, and she is tricked into killing her wife and their unborn child.

 

 _Three_ :

Supergirl murders Lillian Luthor, and the world ends.

 

****

 

**VII.**

Kara flies. Up, up, and away. Away from everything, because everything falls away to nothing, and the colours get muted into a grieving grey.

 

Kara Danvers had been a god trying to be human.

That did not end well.

So now . . .

Now she will take claim of what she is, what she has always been.

Now she will show the world just what it means to anger a god.  

 

****

 

(Hope breaks out of the jar of evil . . .

 

 

. . . and Hope shows just why the gods thought she belonged there in the first place.)

 

 

(This time, when Hope gets trapped in the cold, dark place . . .

 

Well.

This time, that’s where she stays.)

 

****

 

**VIII.**

Kara doesn’t cry. She’s a god, and gods don’t cry.

She does scream, though. She screams until her throat is raw, until her voice tapers off into a hoarse whisper, until the void returns within her soul, growing and growing and growing and echoing with the billion deaths etched in her memory.

 

She doesn’t cry.

She screams, and the Earth trembles beneath her feet.

 

She doesn’t cry.

But her voice does herald the end.

 

And the Earth will cry in her place.

 

****

 

**IX.**

Kal-El finds her, in the north pole. The Fortress of Solitude stands in all its magnificence, but beauty and wonder hold no meaning to Kara anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Why?” she asks, and the coldness in her voice makes him flinch. It is colder than the continent they’re standing on, colder than anything he’s ever heard. “It’s not your fault.”

“Nor is it yours.”

She turns to him, then, and her eyes . . . they’re blank. Empty. It unnerves him, and he barely stops himself from stepping back. “I killed her, Kal.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“She’s not who I was referring to.”

At that he nods. He knows.

“If . . . If it were you,” she starts, stops. Her jaw clenches. “If it were you, would you have done the same?”

“I’m not sure,” he answers. “I don’t want to be. But I think . . . I think I would have done it.” He takes a deep breath, places his hand on her shoulder. She’s still warm beneath his palm, though everything else about her is not. “We’re more alike than you know, Kara.”

“Then,” Kara says, still in that unnerving voice, with that unnerving stare, “you wouldn’t stop me, would you? You know what I have to do.”

And Kal-El sees it, behind the iciness in her eyes. The anger, hardly contained. Pure sheer fury.

This, he thinks, is what the wrath of the gods look like.

“I won’t.”

 

He knows he can’t, even if he wanted to.

 

Sure, he’s a god too.

But the power borne from the pain, the anguish, seething just beneath the coldness in her eyes?

Nothing can stop that.

Not even him.

 

****

 

**X.**

Alex sees her, still covered in blood. The crimson is stark against the blue of her suit, flecks splattered across the insignia of her noble house.

Her sister says nothing. She’s clutching a singed jacket.

Maggie’s, she thinks. She recognizes the NCPD emblem on the sleeve.

Oddly enough, she feels nothing.

“It’s easier to spill red when all I see is black and white,” she tells Alex, her words coated with the frost of a dead heart.

Alex merely nods. She stands by Kara’s side, meets her hard-edged gaze with her own. “What do we do now?”

“I will end this.” Hesitation has no place here, now. “Will you help me?”

Her sister doesn’t waver. “Always.”

There are no more words to say.

 

****

 

**XI.**

Supergirl forms a unified world government. She exercises the caution that Alura used and the wisdom that Zor-El wielded and draws on the drive that fueled Astra.

She will not make the mistakes they did, though.

She sheds the blue-and-red suit and replaces it with black.

The insignia rests atop where her heart used to be.

 

****

 

**XII.**

 

After the love of her life dies, Kara Zor-El unleashes a hailstorm of divine retribution and turns her enemies to ash. Upon the ruins she wrought on the shadows of her grief, she then builds with bloodstained hands the New World Order.

She calls herself the Chancellor, and her word is the law.

She stops chaos and fosters peace.

 

And still nothing fills the void.

 

****

 

**XIII.**

 

Somewhere in Washington, DC, a breach opens.

Two figures step out, a man and a woman.

Barry walks to the window, peeks through the blinds. He winces at what he sees. “Oh, _boy_.”

“What? Why?” Kara stands beside him, her blue eyes holding a world’s worth of worry. She bends her head, looks out as well. Her next breath escapes her in a sharp gasp. “Oh.”

“Yeah, I think this is a different earth.”

Kara is still looking at the Hall of Justice. “You _think_?” she mutters, because there, on the roof, flutters a black banner, and on it stitched is the insignia of the House of El.

On the courtyard below is a statue of Kara Zor-El, with an inscription that reads:

_Kara of the House of El_

_Chancellor of the New World_

“What is the New World?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Her statue-self is not garbed in her usual suit, and is instead wearing what Astra did, the uniform of a Kryptonian general. “Also, can I just say, seeing a statue of myself is so weird.”

“But cool, isn’t it?”

“It’s . . . weird, Barry.” She shakes her head, as if that will remove the weirdness she feels. “Let’s go, I want to go home. Alex will worry.”

“You mean Lena, right?”

Kara rolls her eyes, but her blush is visible even in the dim light. “Shut up. And hurry.” Kara crosses her arms as she takes in the gloom that seems to permeate the very air they breathe. “I feel like we’re not supposed to be here.”

“No, you’re not,” a new voice says, and they both whirl around to face the intruder.

The Guardian takes off his helmet, and James Olsen looks at them like he’s a crusader who finally found the Holy Grail. “But please, we need your help.”

 

From behind the shadows, Lex Luthor emerges.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me or something at [A Blank Canvas](http://agentjoannemills.tumblr.com/ask) or [@eyyogg](https://twitter.com/eyyogg). Gush/Rant about this goddamn ship.  
> Or possibly curse me out.
> 
> P.S. whoooo boiii


End file.
